Released 10 November 2014 Genre Art rock | Format 10"digital download | |
A-side "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" Length 5:26 (single version)4:52 (Blackstar version) | ||
"'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" is a song by English musician David Bowie. It was originally released as a digital non-album single on 10 November 2014 and was later featured as the B-side for Bowie's next single, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", which was released exactly one week later. A re-recorded version of the song appears as the second track on Bowie's 25th and final studio album, Blackstar (2016). "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" charted in multiple countries, including Bowie's home country of the UK, where it peaked at number 107.
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Background and recording
"'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" was released as a single on 10 November 2014 and was later featured as one of the B-sides to "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", Bowie's following single. The name of the song derives from the play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford, an English dramatist of the 17th century. Both songs were re-recorded for Bowie's 25th and final studio album, Blackstar, released on 8 January 2016. American jazz musician Donny McCaslin provided new saxophone parts for the re-recording of "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore". Bowie had done saxophone parts himself for the original version of the song.
On the sound of the song, Bowie wrote: "If Vorticists wrote Rock Music it might have sounded like this."
Critical reception
Mojo critic Andrew Male described the track as "a raucous five-minute mesh of melody and discord, an art-rock anti-war romance, gasping under the pack-ice of no-wave sax-squawk."